Picnic Wars ditches exclusivity, brings the food fight to all Windows Phone users

When is the last time a new Xbox game came out for Windows Phone 7? It must have been Rabbids Go Phone in May. That’s a fun little game for kids and Achievement hunters, but you can also beat it in a couple of hours. Non-Nokia Windows Phone 7 users also gained access to Jet Set Go in June when its Nokia exclusivity ended. Obviously, new Xbox releases for Windows Phone 7 are winding down now that Windows Phone 8 has seeded the market.

Still, general Windows Phone 7 users have plenty of Nokia exclusives whose exclusivity will eventually end to look forward to. In fact, one of those games just became available to all users today: Picnic Wars from Chillingo and Swiss developer Crown Adam. It kind of leapfrogged iBomber Defense as far as general availability goes, but iBomber and the other two Nokia games that launched alongside Picnic Wars can’t be far behind.

Read on for Picnic Wars details and an updated list of current and former Nokia Collection exclusives!

Food versus food

I'm going to have to side with strawberry on this one.

Picnic Wars is quite a unique little game. It centers around the conflict between fruits and vegetables – a tale very much like Romeo and Juliet, only without all the kissing and poisoning. It’s a silly setup told with cartoon panels between certain levels. Players take control of one side in the campaign’s first 32 levels, and then switch to the other in the remaining 32 levels (which are harder remixes of the previous campaign).

The actual gameplay revolves around tossing food at forts in order to eliminate the enemies within and cause as much structural damage as possible. But instead of being all physics-y like Angry Birds and its ilk, aiming the catapults here is mostly a matter of dragging catapults back and forth and choosing the right kind of ammo for the target.  If you enjoy games about breaking things, you’ll probably have fun with it.

Achievement-wise, Picnic Wars is a good purchase (now that it’s been updated). You can knock the whole thing out in four or five hours. Check out our review for more delicious details.

Picnic Wars– Windows Phone 7 or 8 – 66 MB - $2.99 – Store Link

Nokia exclusives update: Current exclusives

Flight Control Rocket

The next three games we can expect to become available to all Windows Phone brands are:

• iBomber Defense (released in December 2012)
• Blobster (released in January alongside Picnic Wars)
• Flight Control Rocket (released in January alongside Picnic Wars)

Blobster

And here’s the full list of Nokia exclusives:

1. Bejeweled Live + - Released: February 18, 2012
2. Blobster - Released: January 16, 2013
3. DaVinci Pinball - Released: April 23, 2013
4. Dream Track Nation - Released: March 22, 2013
5. FIFA 13 - Released: July 8, 2013
6. Flight Control Rocket - Released: January 16, 2013
7. iBomber Defense - Released: December 22, 2012
8. Mass Effect: Infiltrator - Released: May 22, 2013
9. Monopoly Millionaire - Released: April 23, 2013
10. NBA Jam - Released: May 22, 2013
11. Real Racing 2 - Released: May 22, 2013
12. Storm in a Teacup - Released: April 3, 2013
13. The Sims: Medieval - Released: March 26, 2013
14. Tiger Woods 12 - Released: May 22, 2013
15. Tiny Plane - Released: March 22, 2013
16. Vampire Rush - Released: April 3, 2013
17. Yahtzee - Released: February 19, 2013
18. Zuma's Revenge! - Released: February 19, 2013

Former exclusives

1. Connect 4
2. The Game of Life
3. Jet Set Go
4. Mirror’s Edge
5. Parking Mania
6. Picnic Wars
7. Risk
8. Spy Mouse
9. Trivial Pursuit